Alicia Keys has claimed ‘gangsta rap’ was created by the US government to get black people to kill one another.

The Grammy award-winning singer said the genre was being used to maintain negative stereotypes of black people.

She also blamed the authorities for the murders of rap stars Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. Their deaths were ‘fuelled by the government and the media to stop another great black leader from existing’, she said.

The two American rappers were gunned down in separate drive-by shootings – Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996 and Notorious B.I.G in LA in 1997.

But Keys, whose latest album As I Am sold millions of copies, claimed both were the victims of gangsta rap – a ploy invented by the government ‘to convince black people to kill each other’.

Wearing a gold AK-47 machine-gun pendant to symbolise ‘strength, power and killing them dead’, the 27-year-old told Blender magazine she was now writing political songs to promote black nationalism.